Smooth talking stranger

by Lorraine Heath

  “Your mom just needs a little time, that’s all.”

  “She cries at night.”

  He didn’t like hearing that.

  “Maybe you ought to send her some flowers.”

  Hunter grinned. Romance advice from a nine-year-old. What the heck, though. Maybe he had a point.

  He winked at the kid. “I think I’ll do that.”

  The nurse came around the corner, Serena with her. “All right, gentlemen, this way.”

  Serena narrowed her eyes slightly as she regarded them. “Why do you two look like you’re up to something?”

  “We’re not,” Hunter said. Riker was shaking his head so hard he was surprised it didn’t fly off. “Just a little guy talk.”

  The nurse led them into an examination room. “If you gentlemen will just stand back over in the corner, the doctor will be in shortly.”

  Serena sat on the table while Hunter and Riker retreated to the corner like two boys caught scuffling on the playground.

  “This is the worst part,” Serena said. “Just sitting here, waiting.”

  Hunter felt a small hand slide up against his, and he closed his fingers around it.

  “Don’t look so worried, Riker. Nothing bad is going to happen,” Serena said.

  “I know.”

  “So this doctor is good?” Hunter asked.

  “Of course Terrance is good. I wouldn’t be using her if she wasn’t.”

  Right. Of course she was. He just wasn’t thinking. He’d never been in an OB/GYN’s office. It was definitely designed for a woman. There were sketches of women and their body parts hanging on the door that could stunt a man’s sex drive. Then he noticed the poster of the fetus’s developmental stages that was on the wall beside Serena. He eased over to it.

  “What’s that?” Riker asked, following along since Hunter hadn’t relinquished his hold on the kid’s hand.

  “That’s how the baby grows,” Serena said. Reaching out, she touched two different pictures. “The baby is somewhere between these two, I think.”

  Hunter glanced over at her stomach. If he didn’t know she was pregnant, he wouldn’t know she was pregnant. He looked back at the poster. He’d never given any real thought to the development of a child.

  At some point, this little curled up creature was going to be a nine-year-old kid wondering why his dad wasn’t living with his mom.

  The door opened, and Hunter jerked back, banging a trash can and elbowing a container holding pamphlets to the floor. Riker laughed, Serena smiled, and the doctor said, “Nervous, Daddy?”

  Daddy. The word hit him harder than he’d ever been hit in his life.

  “No, I was just startled, that’s all.” He bent down and scooped up the pamphlets that gave instructions on how to examine a breast. That was something he didn’t need lessons on.

  “And you must be the big brother,” he heard the doctor say as he placed the holder back on the counter and nudged the trash can back into place.

  “Yep,” Riker said.

  “Do you want a brother or a sister?” the doctor asked.

  Riker shrugged. “Doesn’t matter as long as it’s healthy.”

  “That sounds like something your mother taught you,” Terrance said.

  “Is it going to be healthy?” Hunter asked.

  The doctor shifted her attention to Hunter, her smile warm and sincere. “It should be. Why don’t we listen to the heartbeat and see?”

  She helped Serena lie down. While the doctor got her instrument, Serena eased her pants down until her stomach was visible.

  “Why don’t you guys get on either side of the table and hold her hand?” Terrance said.

  “Is it gonna hurt?” Riker asked as he quickly went to his mother’s side and took her hand.

  “Not at all,” the doctor said.

  Hunter moved to the other side of the table, but he hesitated to take Serena’s hand. Her doctor obviously thought they were a happy little family, joyously awaiting the arrival of this baby. He felt like he’d felt for most of his life—trying to appear to fit into a situation in which he didn’t really belong.

  Serena wrapped her hand around his, and he shifted his gaze to her brown eyes. She looked so damned vulnerable lying there. But serene as well. Holding his gaze.

  Then the room filled with sound.

  “There it is,” the doctor said.

  Hunter watched as Serena smiled and tears pooled at the corners of her eyes. He’d expected a steady thump, thump, thump. Instead, he heard a rapid swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.

  “Awesome,” Riker said.

  Awesome indeed. Until this moment, it had all seemed abstract. But here was the reality of it. His kid’s heart pumping blood fast and furiously. He shifted his gaze to the poster on the wall, to the beaming boy on the other side of the table, to the eyes of the woman who was squeezing his hand.

  “What do you think, Fletcher?” the doctor asked.

  Holding Serena’s gaze, he said, “I’d die to keep them safe.”

  Sitting in the front seat of the minivan as Hunter drove through town, Serena couldn’t seem to get the look on Hunter’s face as the heartbeat had filled the room out of her mind. Awe. Disbelief. She’d thought he was going to crush the bones in her hand, he’d been holding on so tightly.

  Of course, Terrance had looked equally disbelieving when Hunter had said that he’d die to keep them safe. Only Serena knew he meant what he said.

  “Mom, can we stop at Bert’s?”

  She glanced over at Hunter. “Do you have time for some ice cream?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s a couple of blocks up. On the right. The place with the cow in front.”

  “Got it.”

  Hunter pulled into the parking lot, the van idling.

  Riker opened the side door. “Come on.”

  Serena opened her door. “Riker, wait there for just a second.” She turned to Hunter. He’d never been a chatterbox, but he seemed particularly silent now. “Are you all right?”

  He looked over at her. “It just seems more real.” His gaze dipped to her stomach. “It’s probably always seemed real to you. I mean, the kid’s inside you—”

  “Wait until she starts to kick,” she said, trying to lighten what had somehow become a way too serious mood.

  “She? It’s a girl?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I refer to the baby as a she, sometimes as a he. I don’t like to think of the baby as an it.”

  “So when will she start to kick?”

  “Probably another month or two.”

  “I won’t be here.”

  She thought she detected disappointment in his answer. Her heart suddenly began to beat as rapidly as the baby’s. She was going to be alone again. She was going to go through all this alone. And he was going to be in danger. She wanted to beg him not to go.

  “Mom? Mom? Come on. Let’s get some ice cream.”

  She forced herself to focus her attention on Riker. “All right. Let’s go inside.”

  Bert’s Dairy Barn had carton after carton after carton of flavors to choose from. Riker always got two scoops of chocolate in a sugar cone. Serena always got a strawberry sundae. She stood there, watching Hunter look the selections over and wondered if he’d ever been inside an ice cream parlor. Finally he said, “A banana split.”

  “Riker, why don’t you go find us a booth?” Serena suggested.

  The parlor was small enough that he was never out of her sight as he selected a corner booth.

  “When do you leave?” Serena asked, while the attendant behind the counter was working on the banana split.

  “A few more days. I’ll give you what details I can before I go. A phone number for someone to call who can get in touch with me if you need something.”

  What she needed was for him to stay, to be here with her. A strange thing to realize she needed when she had forced him to move out of the house. Married but separated. She hated it.

  “I’m going to g
o sit with Riker. You can join us when your banana split is ready.”

  He nodded. She started to walk off.

  “Serena?”

  She stopped and looked back at him.

  “Thanks for letting me be at the doctor’s with you today.”

  Ah, God, she thought her heart might break. “You’re the baby’s father. I’m not going to deny you that.”

  She walked to the booth. “Scoot over, Riker, so I can sit by you.”

  He looked up at her, a little guiltily, she thought.

  “You should sit by Dad.”

  She sat on the bench, nudged him over, and put her arm around him.

  Hunter joined them, slid onto the bench opposite them. “This was a good idea, Riker.”

  “Me and Mom come here a lot.”

  Hunter gave her what she could only describe as a teasing grin. “You’re supposed to have a pickle with your ice cream, aren’t you?”

  She grimaced. “No, that’s an old wives’ tale.”

  “Do you have any strange cravings?”

  Nodding, she scooped up some ice cream, slipped it into her mouth.

  “What?”

  “I have a recipe for some stir and set cookies.” She shook her head. He wouldn’t know what she was talking about. “They don’t have to be baked. You prepare them and you drop them by teaspoons onto a platter and they’re ready to be eaten. They have oats in them. I make a bowl…and sit and eat the whole bowl.”

  “What are we talking here…cereal bowl?”

  She held out her hands. “Mixing bowl.”

  His eyes widened slightly. “What other strange things do you do? Riker says you cry at night.”

  His smile was gone, his voice held no teasing.

  “All pregnant women cry. It’s hormones gone wild time.” She patted Riker’s hand. “Sweetie, I’ll get moody, but I’m fine.”

  “Jason’s mom cries.”

  “There, see?”

  “She lets him ride his bike to the Sack ’n Go. All alone.”

  The Sack ’n Go was a gas station–convenience store at the edge of their neighborhood, a few blocks down from where they lived. The store had a help-yourself machine that made a frosty drink the boys liked.

  “So can I ride my bike there?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re too young.”

  “But I’m older than Jason.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I don’t want you riding your bike where I can’t see you.”

  “I’m not a baby.”

  She could feel Hunter’s gaze on her, knew he was probably thinking that she was overprotective. But psychos were out there, even in a small town. She wasn’t willing to risk it. “We’ll discuss it when we get home.”

  “But, Mom—”

  “Riker.”

  He threw himself against the back of the booth. “A dad who lived with us would let me go.”

  She released a deep sigh. Yes, a dad might. How would she let a man help her raise a child who had been hers exclusively for so long?

  Hunter slid a napkin toward Riker and set his cherry on it. “Riker, I want you to look at that cherry. Don’t take your eyes off it. No matter what I say. Understand?”

  Riker nodded. Serena stared at him. What was he doing?

  “How many people are in this building?” Hunter asked.

  Riker lifted his head.

  “Don’t look,” Hunter commanded.

  Riker squeezed his eyes shut. “Five?”

  “Twelve. When we were coming through the door, how many people were coming out?”

  “One?”

  “Very good. What did he look like?”

  “Tall. Skinny. He had a beard.”

  “He was a she—a woman. So your one was a lucky guess.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “You always need to be aware of your surroundings. Your mom is right about convenience stores. You always look before you go into one. They get held up a lot. So you want to make sure nothing bad is going down before you go in.”

  Riker’s eyes got big. “Is that what you do?”

  “Yep. If I were an artist, without looking around, I could draw an accurate picture of everyone who’s in here right now.”

  “Could you really?” Serena asked.

  He nodded. “Yep.”

  “I thought you would think I was being overprotective,” she confessed.

  “I do think that. You just need to teach him to pay attention to what’s going on around him so he avoids trouble.” He tapped his plastic spoon against the plastic dish. “You have to trust him, Serena.”

  Low blow. It wasn’t the same, wasn’t the same at all.

  He hated the damned motel, wanted to be at his cabin on the lake. Needed to be there in order to get his head back to where it had to be before he went out on his next assignment. Because right now his head was in places it had never been before.

  He was stretched out on the bed in the darkness of the ratty hotel, unable to get the sound of the baby’s heartbeat out of his head. His baby. He didn’t even know if he’d be here when it was born. Hell, he could be dead.

  It had never really mattered to him before. The possibility of death, going into dangerous places. He’d always had an edge. A man with nothing to lose. It had made him dangerous.

  He’d never meant anything to anyone, no one had ever meant anything to him. Until now. Now everything mattered. Everyone mattered.

  Serena walked down the stairs. It was after ten, Riker was asleep, everything was quiet. She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the fact that Hunter would be leaving in a few days. She should get the nursery decorated before he left. Buy the furniture. So he’d at least have an idea of where his baby would be sleeping.

  She reached the bottom of the stairs, picked up the phone, set it back down. It was late and he could be asleep. After they’d finished with their ice cream, he’d simply brought her home, told her to call if she needed anything.

  What she needed was someone who would hold her hand when this baby was born. Someone who would run to Bert’s late at night when she was craving a sundae. Someone who would help her guide Riker into becoming the fine young man she was certain he’d become—if only she had the courage to give him wings.

  She was terrified of losing him, terrified of losing this baby. She was surprised that she wasn’t terrified of her own shadow.

  The chime of the doorbell had her heart thudding. She lived next door to the police chief. She really didn’t have anything to fear. Still, she quietly crossed the living room and peered into the peephole. And didn’t know this much gladness existed.

  She opened the door. “Hi.”

  “We need to talk,” Hunter said.

  She nodded. Yes, they did. “Come on in.”

  He looked good as he stepped into her house, carrying the scent of spicy soap with him. He’d just showered. She could tell. Shaved as well. And the clothes he was wearing weren’t the ones he’d had on this afternoon.

  She closed the door, locked it out of habit, and turned to him. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “No. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.” She shrugged. “Craving a sundae actually.”

  “Do you want me to go get you one?”

  She smiled. “Bert’s closes at ten.”

  “Grocery stores don’t.”

  “Maybe later. You wanted to talk.”

  “Yeah. You probably want to sit down for this.”

  Oh, God, it was bad news. He was leaving sooner than he’d planned. She wasn’t ready for this, and she suddenly realized that she would probably never be ready for this. She walked into the living room and sat on the couch.

  He sat beside her, and although she hadn’t known him long, she couldn’t recall him ever looking as grave.

  “There are things I can’t tell you, Serena, I wish to God that I could, but I can’t.”

  Her stomach dropped. She didn�
�t need to hear this. “Hunter—”

  “I’d been undercover, gathering information for a couple of months. I don’t know if there was an innocent leak in intelligence or someone sold me out, but I ended up getting captured. I had information that needed to be protected. The army sent a team in to get me out. All hell broke loose and your husband died as a result.”

  She felt the tears sting her eyes. “I don’t blame you for Steve’s death, Hunter. What I have a problem with is that you don’t trust me.”

  She saw him reach for her hand, then halt and return his hand on his thigh, as though he feared she wouldn’t welcome his touch. “You asked me once about my childhood. My father was a drunk who beat the holy crap out of my mother. One night he locked me in the closet and all I could hear were her screams. Until she stopped screaming.”

  “Oh, my God. Hunter—”

  He held up a hand when she started to reach for him, as though he thought he’d shatter if she touched him. She could see the muscles in his throat working as he swallowed. “She died. I was eight. He was involved in drugs and so much other crap that they were able to stack the charges against him. He got the death penalty. He died by lethal injection when I was eighteen.” He shook his head. “He just went to sleep while my mother died in agony.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  He twisted around and faced her. “I’m not telling you this because I want your sympathy. I just need you to understand that I grew up going from house to house and place to place and there were never yellow curtains. I think I fell for you that first night. I have never not been able to get a woman out of my system—and when I realized who you were, I knew that if I told you that your husband died rescuing me, you’d never look at me the same. Because I know what it is to look at someone who is responsible for another person’s death.

  “It’s not something that’s easy to move beyond. Especially when you loved the person who died.

  “I am so sorry that your husband was the one who had to make the sacrifice for me, that you and Riker had to make the sacrifice. I listened to my baby’s heartbeat today because Steve Hamilton and I had a few minutes of waiting in the shadows for everything to clear so we could get out and he told me where to find paradise. What I have with you is bittersweet, because I know I wouldn’t have any of it if he was alive. And I know I won’t have a future with you if you can’t forgive me.”